A Study Of Trump's Inaugural Address And Obama's First Inaugural Address From The Perspective Of Systemic Functional Grammar

With the rapid development of economic globalization and the swift advancement of Internet information,people's horizons have been gradually broadened from the political and economic development in China to the steady political situations all over the world.The United States,as a powerful country in the world,has always been the focus of other countries.In particular,one of the most widespread concerns should belong to the inaugural address given by successive presidents,and the speech may reflect the president's style of conduct and basic political ideas to some extent.Thus,it can be seen that the President's inaugural speech has the certain research value and practical significance.Donald Trump,who delivered his inaugural address at the White House in the beginning of 2017,has a higher profile than the former president.Besides,Trump,as a commercial tycoon,has been very controversial.It is because of his controversial qualities that the author is very interested in researching his inaugural address.Therefore,this thesis makes a preliminary analysis of two inaugural speeches of President Obama and Trump from the perspective of systemic functional grammar.Although many scholars have studied political speeches from different linguistic perspectives in recent years,as a new president,Trump's inaugural address was delivered a little late.Thus,few scholars have conducted studies of Trump's inaugural speech,so it is also unique about this dissertation.This paper takes Halliday's systemic functional grammar as the theoretical basis,taking the first inaugural address of Obama and Trump as the corpus.And starting from the three meta-functions,this paper tries to analyze Obama's and Trump's inaugural speeches,trying to find out what are the similarities and differences in terms of ideational function,interpersonal function,and textual function.The following three questions have great significance for the research of this paper:Firstly,in terms of the transitivity of ideational function,what are the similarities and differences between Obama's first inaugural address and Trump's inaugural address?Secondly,based on the mood and modality and personal pronoun of interpersonal function,what are the similarities and differences between Obama's first inaugural address and Trump's inaugural address?Thirdly,with regard to the thematic structure and the thematic progression and cohesion of textual function,what are the similarities and differences between Obama's first inaugural address and Trump's inaugural address?Through the analysis and research,the findings of this study are summarized as follows:First of all,in terms of ideational function,the two inaugural addresses both use material processes,relational processes,and mental processes frequently.Obama in his inaugural speech uses more relational processes to illustrate the social reality of the United States and employs the spirit of the American ancestors to inspire the American people.Next,as for interpersonal functions,the two inaugural speeches both focus on the use of declarative mood,low and medium-value modality operators,and the first-person plurals to achieve their political goals.However,the differences in this function are also more obvious.Firstly,regarding the use of mood,higher frequent use of imperative mood in Obama's speech mainly intends to call for Americans to regain confidence and believe that the new government will lead the United States to get out of the shadow of the economic crisis.Secondly,in the use of modal operators,Trump uses more median-value modal operators than high-value and low-value ones.These operators are mainly used to certify that the people's power will be fully guaranteed and concrete measures will be taken after the new government takes office;but the proportion of three levels of modal operators used in Obama's inaugural speech is relatively balanced.High-value modal operators are used to spur the people to cheer up the spirit,and low-value modal verbs are used to illustrate the American people are able to overcome this crisis in virtue of the experience from the ancestors.Thirdly,in the use of personal pronouns,there is a higher frequency of the second-person pronouns in Trump's speech than that in Obama's.Trump mainly emphasizes that power belongs to the people so as to win support from the people.In addition,Trump uses fewer third-person pronouns,mainly because the use of the third-person pronouns makes it easier for people to produce a feeling of distance.Therefore,Trump can subtly avoid the negative comments such as “arrogance” in the media.Finally,as far as textual function is concerned,the two inaugural speeches both high-frequently use the unmarked themes,parallel model of the thematic progression,and four types of cohesive devices.However,in terms of the use of marked themes,the proportion of using marked themes in Obama's first inaugural speech far exceeds that of Trump.Obama mainly uses the marked theme to emphasize that the United States will adopt corresponding foreign policies toward different countries and nations after his inauguration.He extends an olive branch of peace and friendship to the world in order to obtain the support and trust of other countries in the world.This thesis analyzes the inaugural addresses of the two presidents from the perspective of systemic functional grammar,which is helpful for readers to have a general understanding of their speech styles.Moreover,the paper may help readers to appreciate Obama and Trump's speeches in the future.